The Power of Your Vision with Chrystal Evans Hurst
In this solo, conversational video Chrystal Evans Hurst explains why and how to conduct a personal vision‑casting session each year. She opens with a relatable anecdote about touring multiple car dealerships, using the experience to illustrate how actively exploring options expands awareness and reshapes decision‑making. She contrasts vision casting—an open‑ended, imagination‑driven exercise that ignores current resources—with strategic planning, which focuses on concrete steps, timelines, and capacity. Chrystal outlines a practical framework: set aside dedicated time (alone or with a small group), map life into major “lanes” (physical, relational, emotional, financial, spiritual, community), write down unfiltered dreams for short‑, medium‑, and long‑term horizons, and resist self‑editing. She weaves in her Christian faith, citing Scripture (Psalm 37:4, Philippians 1:6) to frame vision as a partnership with God’s “ideas.” Throughout she references tools she uses (Full Circle Planner, daily tracker, Inner Circle community, her online courses) and encourages viewers to use similar resources. The video ends with a call to action: schedule a vision‑casting session, put dreams on a board or paper, and trust that God will bring opportunities into view.
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Hey, y'all. So if you are used to watching me on YouTube or listening to me on the podcast, I am normally in front of a great mic, and I am normally also in my yellow chair. But right now, you can see that I am not there in any one of those places. There's Chick-fil-A on the table. There are people in the background. Why are we here? Because we are wrapping up our 2024 vision casting meeting. What is that, you might ask? Well, I'm gonna tell you all about it in just a second, but what you need to know is for work, for your family, for your community, and for yourself, honey, you need to vision cast. Let's get into it. Hi there, my name is Chrystal Hurst, and if you're joining me here for the first time, cuz it's always somebody's first time, I want you to let me know in the comments. I also just want to tell you Welcome. I am here usually every week dropping a video on YouTube and on Facebook and releasing the audio also in a podcast because I really just like talking. And that's not even true. I, I'm not even a talker, but I like teaching. That's probably a better word. I like knowing actually that there's something that I can share with you from my life that can help you live yours better. And if talking in order to share that is required, then so be it. But my goal is that you are thinking, paying attention your life, that you are being intentional about what you're doing with the small moments in your everyday. Because those small moments, listen, they add up to your lifetime. Every moment doesn't have to be perfect. Every moment doesn't have to be planned. But if you are intentional with as many of the moments as you can be, here's what I know: you can live with little or definitely less regret. So I want to talk to you today about what it looks like to develop a personal vision for your life. Every year I try to make space in my professional life to visioncast, and I want to describe what that is to you. We do it internally, uh, as a team. Now, I spend a lot of time talking to those in my inner circle. In fact, if you're watching this video right now, that's because it was already recorded for my inner circle. At this point, we've probably already been on— in fact, I'm looking at the clock, I'm recording live right now. We've been on for, uh, over an hour. Fun foolery, behind the scenes, um, little nuggets that I share. And then I button up, straighten up, take my earpods or my AirPods or my, my earphones out of my ear, put the mic a little closer, and then I start teaching. And you are getting the teaching version of that. The Inner Circle is a group of women who said, Chrystal, we love what you do, we want to support what you do, and also we want more. If you're interested in finding out more about that, you can just go to chrystalevanshurst.com/innercircle. But I am telling them, we've been talking about, even before I started recording this, just what it looks like to, to think about your life and to be intentional with it. We've talked about what are your top 3 things to do this month? Like, you don't have to be perfectionist about it, but think about it. What are your top 3 things to do this week? Don't beat yourself up if you don't get them done, but at least think about it. At least decide what is happening in my life that I need to give attention to. Because what you give attention to is what you will nurture. What you give attention to is what will then grow. Let me tell you something, I need a new car. It might be this year, it might be next year, it might be 3 years from now, but my car is talking to me. I don't know how much longer she's gonna last. I don't know that I ever really named her, but she is amazing, has been very good to me. My minivan, my Honda Odyssey, will probably hit 200,000 miles on the official this week. She's been creeping closely, very slowly, because I don't really leave home that much these days. I work from home. But she's working to me. And, um, y'all, so I've been going around and I have now gone to the Volvo dealership and the Acura dealership and the Honda dealership. I've been to the Ford dealership. I have been to the Mini Cooper dealership. And when I was at the Mini Cooper dealership, because first of all I can't fit in that little Mini Cooper, I need the one that's a little up higher, because I got in the little one that's down low and it looked like Oompa Loompa trying to get out. But anyway, down the street I realized there's a BMW, and I'm not necessarily like a driver of a BMW. I don't— it's like I don't even know if it's a German car, but it feels hard to me. Like, they're special and they're beautiful, but it feels hard. But I saw one the other day that caught my eye, and I said, you know what, I'm gonna go. I sat in it. It wasn't necessarily my cup of tea exactly. It felt very nice and luxurious, but I was like, hmm. And so I was like, what other car dealerships are nearby? I'm out here looking at cars. I'm doing the most. What else do I want to look at? I even went to the Subaru dealership. Listen, because Subaru's for the win. They last forever. They're functional. Yeah, I've been to every single one. Still got to go to Jeep. I may look at the Audis, but that day I said, let me just look and see what else is close by. You want to know what else was close by? A Porsche dealership. I ain't got no business going to a Porsche dealership, let me just tell you that right now. But I went and I walked in there like I had $200,000 sitting in my back pocket for a car. I walked in there just asking questions like I— see, this is how you need to know how to show up in your life. You need to show up in your life like you're supposed to be there. Don't nobody need to know whether you're supposed to be there or not. You just show up and act like you are. Because you just never know what God is going to do in your life. I walked in, met the most amazing salesman. Actually, I probably need to think about what made him amazing, but one of the things that made him amazing is he didn't pre-qualify me. I was not looking like I should have been in a Porsche dealership. He treated me like a customer who had $200,000 in their pocket. He also didn't treat me like a girl coming into a dealership, treated me like up here. And he used words like things that had to do in there, the things that they had to do with the engine that I didn't know what they meant, but I acted like I did. Oh really? Oh wow, that's powerful. I sure did, because sometimes you need to fake it till you make it. I did ask him to describe some things, but the point is I think I had the best dealership experience of my life going to that dealership ever. Sales experience, hands down. I mean, he was professional, he was kind, he was clear, he was informative, he was patient, and he treated me like I was going to be the biggest sale of his day. He wasn't— and let me— this is it, this is it right here. He treated me as if he did not have to sell me the car because the car would sell itself. He told me that the Porsche tagline for the brand is simply this: there is no substitute. What? He'd been working there, y'all, since 2006. 6. So he is totally aware of the fact that he don't have to— the car will sell itself. The car will sell itself. What does this have to do about vision casting? I don't even know. I don't even know what the point was that I was making. Uh, oh, I know. Now that I've been looking at all of these cars, now I see them on the road. I see them. I never paid attention to the Porsche before. Porsche, Porsche, Porsche. I've never been paying attention. I never looked. Now I see them everywhere. This is happening with every car I've looked at. Now I know the difference between a Volvo, the 40, the 60, and the 90. I actually know the difference I know the difference now between an Outback and a Forester. I know the difference. I know the difference between these cars. And I know the difference between a Macan and a Cayenne. Why? Because I paid attention to them. So my awareness of them is growing. My sense of what I'm drawn to and what I'm not drawn to is growing. My awareness of how much it costs is growing. Do I want to lease? I don't think so. I usually buy a car and drive it for a million years. I think I just want to buy whatever I'm going to buy. My thought processes, by nature of me looking at it, my thought processes have changed. And because my thought processes have changed, my behaviors have changed. I'm looking at my bank account now and I'm like, okay, I was setting money aside for a car. Do I need to add to it? I've never really thought I wanted to pay cash for a car. It seems stupid to me to put all that money into a dying asset. But where interest rates are right now, do I want to pay 7% on a car? Don't want to give that money away in interest. It's making me think about how I want to approach the next major purchase in my life, all because I went and looked. What I learned a long time ago is I spent a lot of time in the weeds. Y'all know I've told you, I mean, my little black book goes everywhere with me. Just pages, words and words and words. That's yesterday's sermon notes. You know, we have the, uh, Full Circle Planner. We're out of stock right now, they're coming back, but this helps me plan out my quarter, what I want to do for the week. Y'all know I got this doggone daily tracker. When the days are busy, I don't do this every day, when they're busy, I write down what I have to do by the hour, how How much water am I drinking? All those things. I believe in writing stuff down. Y'all should know this by now. I believe in writing stuff down. Well, what I was doing is getting in the weeds of what am I going to do this week, and I was not doing the work of backing up to look at my life. Every day I'm in the weeds driving my car, but I needed to back up and look at what was the option for me. What are the other options? What do I want? What makes me go, oh, I enjoy this when I'm sitting in a car. Oh, this seems to fit me when I'm sitting in a car. Oh, I don't like the screen popping up. I like the screen sitting in. Oh my goodness, I didn't even know I like lumbar support. Is that even a thing? Yeah, not only lumbar support, but also the little, the little extra support that comes on the side. It's like you're sitting in your own cockpit. Did I know I like that? I didn't know. Oh, I know I want an electric seat on the left side in the, in the driver's seat. Did I know that I wanted to have for my passenger seat as well? I should ask them that question. Do you have wireless CarPlay? Because I don't necessarily want wires in my car. You know, like, what is your— what is your policy? Your, your, your engine care warranty? These are the things that I'm paying attention to. What do I want? That is the question that you ask when the options are endless and you get to decide right now in your life what you want in the next season. So we get together for vision casting once a year. We get together for strategy meetings at least once a quarter. And then of course we have on our team weekly meetings. I do this for work. No question. Vision casting, the work of vision casting is without thinking about how you're going to do it. What comes to mind? Don't worry, Chrystal Hurst, about how much that car costs. I mean, yeah, but Don't worry about that. Just go and let your imagination loose for a little bit. What do you enjoy? And try out different things on for size. Vision casting says, I serve a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. I serve a God who makes the impossible possible. I serve a God who goes beyond my good ideas and gives me God ideas. What might he have for me? And you just sit there and you dream and you put it on the board and it feels crazy and you don't think it can happen for you, but it's in your heart, so you put it on the board. We do this for work, we do this for the Sister Circle, we do this for the Chrystal brand, um, we do this. But it dawned on me in one of our recent meetings, girl, do you do this for yourself? Like, really? Like, there's a whole section in the planner that we have, and there's— it is in the shop digitally. I think you can go to thesistercircle.com/planner. There's a digital version in there. And at the beginning of the planner, we do— we talk about setting goals and dreaming. And even as we go to the retreat that's coming up, um, in October, there are people who are coming a day early to vision cast for their life. I think we don't hit the heights, the potential heights in our life often because we never allowed ourselves to dream. We never allowed ourselves to say the thing out loud that we're not even sure we can do. We don't allow ourselves to put into the atmosphere the thing that God has seeded in our heart, that while we don't know how we get there, let's just at least admit that it's what we want. Eyes have not seen, the Bible says, ears have not heard what God has planned for those who love them. So when the Holy Spirit whispers it in your ear, or when the Holy Spirit gives you an idea, a God idea, a God vision for your life, other people probably won't have seen it, and you yourself may have no idea how you make it happen. If we do it for work, why won't we do it for our life? Vision casting is different than strategic meetings. Strategic meeting says, how am I going to get this done in the next 90 days? How am I going to— what is the plan of action? What are the steps? How do we go from where we are to where we want to be? How do we ensure that what we plan to do is actually what we're going to do? Whose job is it to take on this responsibility? If you have a strategic plan with your family, it's what is on the calendar in our family for the next few months or the next month. How are we going to accomplish that? You ride with Dad, you ride with sister, you ride with mom. That's all strategic. It is working out the details. I'm not talking about strategic, I'm talking about vision. A friend of mine told me, if you come to your vision meeting and you try to have a strategic meeting at the same time, you will kill your vision. She told me, Chrystal Hurst, the problem is you were trying to have your vision meeting at the same time you're having your strategic meeting. This is when there were only two of us, and sometimes we were accompanied by a third. I had one meeting a year. We put everything on the whiteboard, everything I wanted to do, everything we had to do. Then we prioritized it and then we decided what we're going to focus on. But can I just tell you that every time we had that meeting for work, I constrained my vision by what I had the capacity to do with my team. I'd look at it and think strategy. Well, I don't want to put that on the board because how are we going to do that? We don't have enough people. We don't have enough money. And she said, oh no, no, no, Chrystal Hurst, vision casting should be fun. You should just put it out there because you can. She told me this for work. What I'm telling you is that when you vision cast personally, it should be the same. You allow your heart to run. If I had enough money— and I'm not talking about buying cars, y'all, I'm talking about what you're doing with your life. If I had enough money, I would go back to school and get that master's degree. Don't worry about what you don't have, put it on the board. If I could determine that I would meet my mate, here's what I would want to get married. Here's, here's the day in time, a year from now, 2 years from now, that I'd want to get married. I, I want to, I want to be married by the time I'm 40. That's on my vision board. I can't control it. But that doesn't mean I can't dream for it. I can't ask God for it. I want a house big enough to have a guest room so that when friends come to town they can visit. I have no idea, I'm still in an apartment. Put it on the vision board. And vision two ways for your life in the next year— three ways rather— in the next year, in the next 3 to 5, and for your life. When I look back on my life, what will I wish I would have done the year I turned 50 or the year I turned 51? You put it on the board and just dream a little. And which one do you do if you can't do all of them? The one that feels the easiest. What do I want my life to look like when I'm 70? If that's easy, go with that. What do I want my life to look like in the next year? If that's easy, go with that. What I'm saying is, without constraint, without strategy without needing to know what every bullet point is. You just allow yourself to dream. Vision for the year: I want to be down 30 pounds, 50 pounds, 10 pounds. Vision for my life: I want to look back and know that I did not have any preventable diseases. I want to be in my 80s and still operating and feeling well. I want to still be able to go on vacation with my grandchildren. That's a longer-term vision. What I'm just saying to you is You should have a vision for your life, and don't let the price tag sway you. I sat in that Porsche, y'all, and I thought, I like driving, and I've been buying a car that had enough room for everybody else. I bought a minivan because it had room for all my people, and I love my minivan. When the grandkids come over and if I have to take them somewhere, it's easy to snap those car seats in and out. I mean, like, I'm almost contemplating getting another minivan. Because I like driving my minivan. But no, not in this season. And again, I don't know what I'll buy this year, next year, in the next 3 years. Who knows? My van may last. No car payment for the win. And when we drive up to like fancy restaurants to meet with our family or to have business meetings, my husband's like, oh, we driving this beat up minivan, all these Range Rovers and Bentleys, you know. I'm like, we don't have no car payment. So I get to decide what I want to drive in the next season. And me learning that I want a car that hugs me like a glove and that guns when I drive it, I learned that going to the Porsche dealership. Doesn't necessarily mean that the Porsche is my car, but I learned that because I allowed myself to dream. What if— let me just go see. Let me give you some specific pointers. That was all encouragement and inspiration. Let me give you some specifics. You should take time once a year for your own vision casting meeting. You can do it by yourself, you can do it with 2 or 3 friends, but the point of it should be to put your dreams on the board or on the piece of paper in the major lanes of your life. Think about yourself physically, relationally, emotionally, monetarily, financially. Think of yourself spiritually, uh, soulfully. Think of yourself from a community standpoint. Look at the major lanes of your life, and for each of those lanes, say, who do I want to be in the next 3 to 5 years, or the next year, or when I'm nearing retirement? Pick your time frame, whatever's easiest, and say, if I could get my life together, if I could see this in my life in these areas, I would be happy with what my life is, is giving me. So vision cast for your life once a year. Think about your life in lanes. Think about your life in lanes. And the third thing is don't edit. You don't put it on the board and then say, that's never going to happen. No, you don't edit. You don't critique. And if you need to do this with friends, um, we did this in 2021. We had the course Reinventing the Life You Love. We should probably do something with that. We had this course, we did it live, and we created our vision boards for the year. And I can't tell you how many women who came to that said, oh my gosh, these things actually happened. Because something crystallizes when you put it on the board, whether it's in a notebook, literally on a vision board, put it on your— on a whiteboard in your house. Something crystallizes when you name it. I'm not saying name it and claim it, but I am saying when name what it is that you want. Why? Because as soon as you name it, as soon as you identify it, you're looking for it. That is the beauty. And when you put the power of everything that God has already given you, power of the Spirit in your life, then you'll see it. Just like me seeing those Porsche— uh, Porsches all over the road. As soon as I went and looked at one, all of a sudden I started seeing them. Why am I seeing them? Because one day I just said, let me just put on the board what could be possible. You see things differently when you focus on them differently. You see all of the opportunities, you see what you'd like and you don't like. You see, because one day you decided to let yourself dream a little. Don't self-edit, because why would you hold yourself back from something that maybe God is trying to invite you to? And what if the reason why it's in your heart to begin with is because he put it there. The Bible says he has given us the power to make wealth. So if you have a desire to make wealth and you're like, God, I have this idea, but I'm gonna need you to show me how to actually make sure it makes money, just dream a little. Because if you are going to be a vessel that he can use What makes you think he wouldn't give you the power or the God ID to do that if he knows you're going to be a blessing to other people? If he knows you're going to be actively investing in the kingdom because he's blessed you? What if he put that there because he knows you have a money-making mind? If he put it in your heart to be a mother, and that's a dream you have— you can't control that, you know, if you're not married, you don't have any kids— but don't ignore the desires you have. Just put it on the wall. If you want to go back to college and you have absolutely no idea how you're going to get that master's degree done or how you're going to start that doctorate program, don't worry about it. Just put it on the wall. Vision casting says, I'm going to put it on the wall so I identify what it is that I'm looking for. So when God brings it along the road of my life, I'll see it. I'll see it. You want to set aside time to dream at least once a year. You want to think of your life in lanes. What are the major arteries of my life that will make a difference when I get to the end of my life and look back on my life in these areas? These are the areas that I want to have made major moves in, in my life. And then as I dream, don't self-edit. Psalm 37:4 says— and this is my cousin Winter, she passed away, gosh, 5 years ago. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you your heart's desires. Commit your way to the Lord, trust him, and he will act. She had this on a closet wall, and I know this because when she left one house, my daughter moved into that same house, and my daughter, when she was moving in, found a sticky note on the back wall of the closet master closet. Psalm 37:4, in another version it says, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. She had posted it there because she was in a season of raising 4 girls, the last 2 of which were twins. She felt stuck. She had dreams of writing, and she put that up there to encourage that God can— I have a vision that I'm gonna be a writer and I don't know how I'm gonna do that, and right now I have these girls and I When will the point in life come where I can actually do the thing that's in my heart to do? She put that on the wall. This is why, and I've known the scripture, but she put it on her wall. You just delight yourself in the Lord, let him worry about the rest. So when she died, she had written 10 books in 4 years. The reason why this happened is because the Lord said I want you to delight in me in the season that you're in. What does that look like? I've given you 4 girls. Give them all that you've got. Her ministry was born out of her ministry to girls because she decided to agree with God that she was going to invest in the season that she was in, not even knowing that that's where the book deal would come from, that's where the magazine would come from, that's where all of these books that were just overflowing out of her life, the journals and all the things that was just coming, because she put it on the wall. Said, I don't even know what you have planned. I just know that you've asked me to commit my ways to you. That's what verse 5 says: Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. I'm just going to put in front of you right now what I'm supposed to be doing, and I'm going to let you worry about the rest. And then the dream that she needed to have for things she didn't even think about, he started putting it in front of her. Yes, you're always been a writer. And yes, you have 4 girls. Guess what I wanna do with that? Do you see it, Winter? Do you see it? Do you see it? Do you see it? And then she saw it because she was looking for it. If we can vision cast at work and if people can have 1-year plans and 3-year plans and strategic 90-day plans and project management sprints and Scrum meetings and all these different things, and what is the vision statement and the mission statement and all of these things to drive a company, to drive a business, to drive a ministry, what makes you think you shouldn't have a vision that drives your life? So this is me telling you, make room for your vision casting meeting. And if the only people that come to that vision casting meeting are me, myself, and I, well, have some good fellowship and decide what your heart, your soul, your brain, and your body want or need and put it on the board. Just put it on the board. You can come back later and have a strategic meeting about it. You can come back later and then self-edit, but we're not going to do that on the vision casting day. So what does this look like? Find your favorite coffee shop, let your husband take the kids, go get a hotel room, go find an Airbnb in a tiny house. Come away with me to Cali in 2023. And make some space to dream. Do you realize how precious this gift of life is? That there will never be, nor has there ever been, someone just like you. And if you get stuck in the weeds, I mean, listen, all the things that are on paper are important. I got groceries I gotta get today. Correct. I gotta finish cleaning up my house from the tornado of 30 people that came through here last night. I gotta do that today. I am not taking away from the things you have to do today. What I'm saying is, If you only live in the weeds, you're gonna miss the sight of the forest. How do you get a true sight of the forest so that you know what the depth and the breadth and the length and the beauty of that is and where it's located? You got to get up out of the weeds, fly a little higher to see actually what the landscape is doing in your life. How do you fly higher? You set aside the time. You get out of the everyday, go to a coffee shop, go to Panera. When the weather changes and it's nice outside, go to a park, sit in your car and wind the windows down and just write down what you want, what your hopes are, what your dreams are. And then you put them on a piece of paper. You decide what are you going to keep in front of you. So that you don't forget what he already put in your heart to do. Here's what I love. The Bible says in Philippians 1:6 that he will finish the work that he started in you. What does that mean? If he put it in you, he wants to work it out of you. He's not going to do that without you. You have to participate. But is he interested in seeing the seeds that he's planted in your mind and in your heart come to life? He is. Does that mean that you have the power of God working on your side? You do. Does that mean you'll have to work hard? You will. But does that mean because you can't quite see how you get there and that the journey will be hard that you can't do it? It doesn't. You have the power to do, be, achieve, and experience anything that God puts in your heart and keeps in your heart as you delight yourself in him. But I think he wants you to get outside of the weeds. He wants you to see beyond the trees. And often going away, being by yourself, opening up yourself to heaven and saying, listen, God, I know you are dreaming bigger dreams for me than I would ever dream for myself. I have open hands. Show me who you want me to be. I always said I wanted to be a writer. I'm a writer. I have the first book I made when I was in the first grade in Talented and Gifted in my elementary school down the street from my house. I've always been a writer. I've always been a connoisseur of words. But if you would've asked me in my 20s, where that was going to fit, I would have said, "Oh, I don't know, because I don't know how to write a book." But I'm a writer. And then I said, "One day, I think I will." It went on the board. I think I'm going to write a book when I'm in my 60s, because then I'll know which one of my kids I can talk about in illustrations and which ones I shouldn't. Then I'll know if I actually was wise in my life and made good decisions. I'll know if I'm passing along information that it's good information to share. And then in my late 30s, I saw the opportunity pass by. I saw the opportunity on the road. My dad said, hey, I need your help with this project. It wasn't to write a book, it was to gather illustrations for a book. But that was— I noticed it. In fact, I actually said no first. I was like, Dad, I don't have time. I homeschool my kids. I got college and kindergarten happening in my house at the same time. I don't have time. And he said, but I thought you said you wanted to be a writer. This is an opportunity for you to just do a little something and make some extra money. I didn't even really hear the development of being a writer. What I heard was make extra money, because we homeschool people, people out here be on one income, be like, you got extra money? Okay. That opportunity came by. And I saw it because I've been looking for it. Every opportunity that comes in my life, some of them I see, some of them I don't. But what I can tell you is I have an agreement in my spirit when it agrees with the vision he's given me for my life. Not necessarily what I'm supposed to do this year, what I'm supposed to do in my life. Because what if his timing is different than my timing? What if God's ways are different than my ways? They are, you know, they are. So this is me telling you to create a vision for your life. If you need to know how to do that, we've got materials in the store to help you plan. But you can just get out a piece of paper, notebook, spiral notebook, and write down what you think, what you feel, and what you see. And don't think too hard about how you're going to get there. Just know you serve a God who knows the way. Here's to vision casting, personal vision casting. Do it for work, do it for your family, do it for yourself, and then watch your eyes light up as things that you'd never seen before to start to show up in your life. I hope this has been helpful. If it has, share it with a friend. If you're on YouTube, be sure and like, subscribe, all the things that cool kids say. If you're on Facebook, be sure and follow and share this message. If you're listening on the podcast, go ahead and share it. Tell a friend. I hope you are not just entertained. I hope you're not even just encouraged. I hope you are convicted to the point of holy motivation to do something with the lesson you've learned today. All right, y'all, we'll talk to you next week. See you soon. Bye!
